NPR

Thanksgiving was extra exciting after finding out that the NPR piece for “All Things Considered” called: “Shifting Gears: Commuting Aboard the L.A. Bike Trains” went LIVE the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when basically everyone in the country was listening to the radio! Friends from all over the country contacted us to say, “Is that you? What a great project!”

Sadly the more common response is that while the story begins with a heartwarming story of Conductor Charles Dandino’s success with his rider, Barbara; it ends with a quote from Jackie Burke who loudly exclaims, “It’s very frustrating, to the point where I just want to run them off the road,” Burke says. “I’ve actually done one of those drive-really-close-to-them kind of things to kind of scare them, to try to intimidate them to get out of my way.”

And it kinda hiijacked the whole conversation and scared off a lot of people who might have given L.A. Bike Trains a try without it. So what should have been an epic pro-bike discussion, backfired. But it also gave us the NPR platform to encourage a follow up conversation, that could have a hugely positive impact on improving the national dialogue re: driver/cyclist relationships. Read L.A. Bike Trains founder, Nona Varnado’s response via The Bird Wheel.